Dar seafood ppp standard

Risk ranking matrix

Estimates of the severity of adverse effects caused by the hazards encountered in seafood, and the likelihood of those effects occurring in the general population – defined as the population of generally healthy adults, irrespective of whether or not they consume seafood – are brought together to provide a ranking of the relative risk associated with the particular hazard/commodity combination using the matrix presented in Table 5.

This approach is consistent with the Codex recommendation that a risk characterisation integrate all of the qualitative and quantitative information available into a soundly-based risk estimate, and mirrors the Codex definition of risk as being a function of the probability and the severity of an adverse health effect. Using the matrix, the relative risk assigned to each commodity or group of commodities is qualitatively ranked as high, medium or low. Each broad risk ranking category can arise from three possible combinations of severity and likelihood estimates, as seen in Table 5.
In some susceptible sub-populations (for example, the very young and old, the immunocompromised, and pregnant women and their unborn children), certain hazards may cause illness of greater severity, or illness may occur at a lower infectious or toxigenic dose, leading to a ranking different to that obtained for the general population. In such cases, the relative risk rankings have been explicitly identified for both general and susceptible populations, to guide subsequent development of risk management strategies. However, the overall relative risk ranking for each seafood commodity or group of commodities in this report is a ‘general population’ risk estimate.